Callahan's is Back!

After three + years of work, Callahan's Siskiyou Lodge (www.callahanslodge.com) has risen from the ashes of the September 2006 fire that destroyed the landmark hotel which opened its doors in 1947. It is bigger than before, more modern and has a dramatic "lodge" look to it. There is a great restaurant again which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner Friday through Monday.

Sixteen of the 19 rooms have wood burning fireplaces and all have jacuzzi jet tubs, right in the room along with refrigerators, flat screen HDTV, and wireless internet access. Breakfast is included in all accommodations and reservations are strongly recommended by calling 800-286-0507 or emailing them at info@callahanslodge.com.

The lodge property is located at the Ashland Ski Resort exit on Interstate 5 at the very top of the Siskiyou Summit making it the perfect stopover for a Medford shopping run or a weekend skiing getaway. The Pacific Crest Trail is only 1/4 mile from the lodge, and Ashland is only 8 miles further (and all downhill!).

Note; this is not a paid testimonial. I have yet to eat or stay at this facility and they have not compenstated me for this article in any way.

Bom Jesus, the "Diamond Ship"

(Excerpted from the October '09 National Geographic.)

This is a story that I will remember for a very long time. Five hundred years ago wealthy Portuguese merchants were outfitting ships to sail on a fifteen month voyage to the East Indies on the route pioneered by Vasco De Gama in 1497. The riches sought were spices and the monies to pay for them included Spanish excelentes and portugueses, with the coat of arms of King Joao III. But also there were copper ingots, a staggering 22 tons of them, in the shape of a half-cannon ball with the trident hallmark of Anton Fugger, one of Renaissance Europe's wealthiest financiers.

Fast forward to April of last year at one of the world's most jealously guarded diamond mines on the coast of Namibia, De Beer's Sperrgebiet ("forbidden zone" in German). A mine engineer finds one of the ingots and immediately halts operations around the cordoned-off find.

Which is no small thing because this riverbed site contains one of the most intense concentrations of high grade diamonds in the world. Washed down to the Atlantic from sites as far as 1,700 miles inland by the Orange River, only the hardest, best quality diamonds make it to this spot, some weighing hundreds of carats. The strong northerly current scattered this lode for miles northward along the coase of Namibia.

Only a few Portuguese East Indiamen or "naus" have been professionally excavated by archaeologists. Most have been plundered by treasure hunters so this is an extra-ordinary find but very difficult to research. In November of 1755 a massive earthquake and tsunami washed the Casa da India, the vast Lisbon archive of maps, shipping records, and charts into the Tagus River.

Without these printed records the researchers had to work backward from clues found on the wreck and one of the most helpful was the rare portugueses of King Joao III. They were minted only from 1525 to 1538 then recalled, melted down, and never re-issued. Their presence onboard along with the copper ingots indicated the vessel was on its outward passage to India rather than returning during this 13 year window.

Eventually researchers learned that the Bom Jesus was brand new and owned by the king himself when it departed Lisbon on 7 March 1533 with 300 souls on board. Reconstructing the story from surviving snippets of information about the fleet historians learned that it was struck and scattered by a huge storm just before the eastward turn around the Cape of Good Hope. Breaking up and drifting north the Bom Jesus eventually grounded 150 yards offshore just 16 miles north of the Orange River.

No one knows what happened to the survivors, if there were any. Local experts say the storms are sometimes so severe that getting ashore is impossible. Yet there are calm days too, and it's possible especially since no human remains were found at the site, that much or even most of the crew made it. If so they must have been desolated by the grim desert environment and the knowledge that rescue was never going to come. Still, the area was visited seasonally by the hunter gatherers we now call Bushmen and they may have helped those who lived through the wreck. But the story ends there. No trace of them remains in the written record.

The exquisite irony of the fabulously wealthy ship owned by a king crashing on a famously rich diamond mine is not lost on the projects researchers. The tale is compelling and a gold-framed window on the past.

100% Chance of Rain

Don't you love it? "100% CHANCE"?? I mean, 100% is a done deal isn't it? THERE WILL BE RAIN. This is now on my favorite oxymoron list, right up there with political decency, civil war, and all that.

But speaking of weather, there is a great weather website that has no ads, it's the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and the adress is www.wrh.noaa.gov. You can put in any location but you can also bookmark our area so that when you want a week's forecast, you get it right away. There is probably a way to put this on your desktop too, but I haven't got that far yet.

There are a great many features in this site, such as forecast discussion which is the meteorologist's narrative of what is coming our way. The text has special terms in boldface which means you can click on them and get a definition. "Trough" for example means an elongated low pressure area not associated with a circulating low pressure system which typically brings a "front", another definition.

We find this site particularly helpful with winter coming on because we can enter a destination or waypoint and see what we're getting into. Then we cross-check www.dot.ca.gov/dist2 which is Siskiyou County to get the Cal Trans road conditions.

This site gives not only chain requirements but you can also view the roadway from their remote cameras which is very helpful if you are headed to Medford and going over the Siskiyous because there is a camera at Hilt and one at the summit.

Of course all of us in Lake Shastina also benefit from "The Wall". This is an orographic (look that one up) 'curtain' which forms at the upper end of the Sacramento River canyon roughly between Mt. Shasta and Weed. I checked the precip records once and this is how I recall them: Dunsmuir had 54+ inches, Mt. Shasta 36", Weed 26, and Shastina 16. The moisture fell to the ground as it rose up the canyon.

As residents of the Shasta Valley know, one can clearly see a weather wall to our south when a storm is in progress . . . it may be raining or snowing like crazy in Weed and points south while we might experience wind and partly cloudy skies.

This is one of the biggest reasons we moved here. After 33+ years in Mt. Shasta we got REAL tired of drifted snow so deep we could not even get to work some days. We found the almost-snowless conditions of Lake Shastina particularly appealing after shoveling our roof in 2001 for the third consecutive year.

So yes, we had a 50-year snow storm a couple years ago of a foot or so but I'll take the wind any day.

The Almost-Too-Good-To-Be-True Bread Making Machine

I almost titled this "Real Estate and Baked Bread" because we are taught when showing a home that certain aromas trigger happy memories from childhood making buyers relax and more comfortable which is the state of mind a seller would like them to be in. There are many aromas that can be introduced when showing but the one at the head of the list is freshly-baked bread.

So when a good friend told us that she had baked her own bread with the help of a new device that did it all hands-off, we got motivated. She bought hers, a Panasonic model SD-YD250, after researching the different brands and ratings extensively online. Having never heard of these machines we were mildly surprised there were so many brands and models to choose from but we followed her advice and got one from Amazon.com for $129.99 with no sales tax and no shipping fee.

It's about the size of a countertop microwave oven and looks like this:



Anyway the big idea is that it does all the functions that you used to have to do by hand (which took so long that there wasn't any fun left)____ mixes the ingredients, kneads, bakes, and keeps warm. You can make different loaf sizes and lots of different kinds of bread, even pizza crust. By adding various things like walnuts or cranberries you can create different flavors, too.

But again, it truly is hands-free. Plop the ingredients inside, put the yeast in the small hopper on top and start. It took about five hours for Sally's first loaf of whole wheat honey bread but you can't imagine how wonderful the aromas were that floated around the house that day. And then of course what a thick, warm slice slathered in butter tasted like.

There are health benefits too, of course. Whole grains, no preservatives or artificial additives, and Sally estimated the ingredients cost less than 50 cents. If you are paying the typical $3 loaf price at the super this means you'd pay off this device's $130 cost with 52 loaves of far superior bread than the store-bought kind.

For a final clincher, one of our tenant-clients is a route sales manager for a major bread company and (you can see this coming, right?). Yes, he has one and loves it.

So attention sellers; if you're thinking of listing your home give this one a thought. And beyond the powerful effect it will have on buyers imagine programming the machine so you wake up to a freshly-baked loaf to enjoy with your morning coffee . . .

Air Conditioning

I learned a great lesson today from Marcus, the service tech at Mountain Aire in Yreka. We had replaced the compressor and fan motor on a client's air conditioner here but the tenant called yet again to report no cold air was flowing.

Well, the first lesson was that ants are attracted to the electrical contacts in the A / C's panel. He had found them at this location on one of his earlier visits. So if you have ants (who in Lake Shastina doesn't?) be sure to spray or put out poison bait, especially near the air conditioner panel.

The other point he made is that most residential air conditioning units are sized to keep the temperature no higher than 70 or 72 degrees in a typical home. To get down into the 60's one would be over-working the compressor which can ice up as it did in the instance we inspected last night.

We also checked the filter in the furnace return vent. If a filter is plugged up the air conditioner will struggle against itself trying to pull air in to cool it. In this case the filter was clear but since many of us run the furnace fan all day and night when it's hot outside they plug up sooner than usual so don't wait the normal 3 months or whatever. It's cheap insurance. By the way, furnace return vents are larger than output vents (registers) and usually located high on the wall or ceiling where the warm air collects to make for more efficient heating in winter.

So three simple preventative things we can all do to avoid service calls: keep the ants away from the A / C panel, use the manufacturer's suggested settings of 72* in the daytime and 78* at night. Or higher, according to your comfort level. And check the air filters in the furnace return vent.

Ah-Di-Na

Many of you have visited this campground on the McCloud River below the reservoir and we took our daughter Ami there today after many long years. The road takes off from McCloud Reservoir and is not bad as dirt roads go up to the top where it begins the drop to the river and the campground area. Then it gets more rocky and you begin to wish you'd brought the truck.

We took a Hyundai Santa Fe and I was worried about the tires because the rocks were angular and sharp, not like river rock. And there were places where the roadbed was all bedrock, with pointy rock jutting up that was black...the rubber from passing tires. I am told bias-ply tires are better for this kind of road due to their superior sidewall strength. But I had radials. What else to do but move forward?

Only one place was touchy clearance-wise; a culvert had washed bare and we had to creep over it. If you keep your speed down and imagine what rock vs oil pan looks like, you'll be fine.

Ah-Di-Na is not, surprisingly, an Indian name. The Forest Service handout says at least three Indian tribes claim that it is in their traditional territory but none of them named it that. Yet it apparently still was an ancient settlement which was bought from the railroad by a wealthy San Francisco family named Wittier in 1896 for a fishing retreat.

In 1916 it was sold to another rich family by the name of Fitzhugh and finally in 1936 to the Hearst family which also owned the fabulous Wyntoon estate upriver. It was during these Depression years when it was built up the most . .. a telephone system, a good supply road from Wyntoon for the mules, marble baths, you name it.

Then all the buildings were burned in 1958 because of infrequent use and vandalism.

So today all that's left are some foundations, a reconstructed cabin, a chimney, a probable root cellar, several stone pits (water reservoirs? fishing pools? stock ponds?), and an orchard. All these are on a very short and poorly marked 1/4 mile trail which was littered with bear scat.

As the old timers say, where there is bear puckey you can figure there are bear, and in case we had not taken enough notice of the one that had crossed the road earlier in front of the car, sure enough Sally sees something thrashing in the bushes maybe 20 feet from the trail.

I heard the distinctive whoof-whoof sound they make when they warn you and we all beat a graceful (I can say that, now) rearward stroll to the campground. Where, by the way the first camper we ran in to seemed rather calm about it all, given that the bear was no more than 300 feet away from his campsite at that very moment. Bully for you I thought, but no way am I camping here.

So we drove on down the mile or so to the Nature Conservancy's McCloud River Preserve where you have to park and walk maybe half a mile on a semi-improved trail. It's definitely walking stick country here and no restrooms. Fishing is by special permit, artificial lures and flies only, and of course, catch and release. A staff person lives on site where solar panels and propane are the only source of energy. The latter is apparently carried in on the backs of volunteers since there is no way a mule could navigate the trail (in my opinion anyway, but maybe they float the 10 gallong tanks down the river in a raft).

Pristine, quiet, and very peaceful. No wonder the rich and famous came here. There apparently were several private fishing reserves along this stretch in the first half of the 1900's and much of the land is still private so if you visit please respect not only the nature that provides it but the owners as well.

Gasoline Discounts in Siskiyou County ___ Every Day

I have just learned that Siskiyou Development offers a 5 cent discount on gasoline for seniors at every one of its three locations: the Spirit station in Weed, the Chevron in Mt. Shasta, and the Texaco at the central exit in Yreka. But get this . . . it's every day of the week.

Owner Margaret Dean has made this courtesy available for some time without fanfare and hopes seniors will take advantage, especially in these hard times.

But be advised. You may be carded (wouldn't that be a treat?!?!).

The Lavender Farm and the Shoe Fence

This is a photo Sally took today as we were day-tripping on her (XX-th)birthday. It is a little-known lavender farm off Harry Cash Road that is only open about a month during the year, from mid-June to mid-July. There is no admission and you can pick your own fresh lavender ($3 for 100 stems), take gorgeous pictures of the mountain and valley (the view is awesome), try their lavender lemonade, or buy any number of lavender products in their tasteful store ___ soaps, candles, baskets, too much to list.

Or you can sit outside as I did and relax with the fields unrolling to the left and the valley to the right enjoying lemonade while Sally did all the above.

After leaving consider turning right on Harry Cash instead of going back the way you came. This will eventually take you into the beautiful Little Shasta area and past the Shoe Fence.

I have no idea who did this or why, perhaps a reader who does will let me know. But it's been here for a long time and just the first of many photo ops along the road. Beautiful country homes, farms, colorful wash hanging in front of an ivy-covered garage, and of course the iconic church at Little Shasta ___ a favorite spot (although the lavender farm is too) for weddings.

The road eventually brings you into Montague where you can turn north and visit the old county airport where radio control enthusiasts and sail plane pilots practice. Or west on Highway 3 to Rohr Field (sightseeing airplane rides, charter, and center for the hot air balloon events Montague sponsors) and Yreka.

We have flyers from the lavender farm if you'd care for one and you can see more on their website, www.shastalavender.com.

Milkshake Ending

Our 18 year-old grandson (the handsome one in the middle) and two pals biked through Scott Valley into Trinity Center over the holiday and I had hoped to buy them a burger and shake to celebrate but, like a few other things in this project, it didn't turn out quite as planned.

As noted in an earlier post they had brought most of their personal belongings to carry, thinking I suppose they were moving into a college dorm. There was so much packed onto each bike that we had several near-fatal tip-overs on top of Forest Mountain at launch time. This proved significant for the plan because they made several stops to re-tie their loose loads and were not able to reach Callahan until 8pm the first day.

Truman and I had carefully planned this route and the hope was to get going early and reach the crest of Scott Mountain well before dark because we could not find any campsites in Scott Valley. There was a sort of wide spot in the road at the summit however, that hikers and horsemen apparently use as a jumping-off point for treks. The late start (almost noon) and repeated stops prevented that however and the boys ended up "hoboeing it" across from the USFS station a couple miles east of Callahan.

But they reached the summit shortly after noon the next day and were in the jump-off area where my son Pete caught up with them. He was on a resupply mission with bannanas, cookies, & water because of another unforseen wrinkle; cell phones don't work well in that area. Tru was supposed to check in and we all got a little anxious when he didn't, especially Uncle Pete who takes Truman under his wing.

They were repairing a flat tire and after Pete left they cruised ___ that is too generous, they finagled down the south side of Scott ___ a hair-raising series of U- turning steep grades. I know, we drove back this way, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

At the bottom, where the Trinity River enters the lake, the tire let go completely so they hid the bike in some brush and Isaac who was riding it hitched into Trinity Center behind the other two who rode the 5 miles into town. They spent the day and night there before calling on a pay phone for the pick-up which originally was to be in Weaverville, another 25 miles or so down the lake.

When we arrived they were mucho tired and very tanned. They led us back to the abandoned bike and we parted ways . . . they headed to Weaverville and then to Redding where they turned south for home. We retraced our route and thereby got to appreciate their Scott Mountain experience. Trinity Center by the way was almost shut down. The lake was so low that no boats could launch and the lake is the lifeblood of the community so I couldn't find a burger/milkshake to save my life.

I think it was one of those out-on-your-own experiences that all of us can remember from our pre-adult lives and probably a good thing to do before the seriousness of college. I won't know for probably ten more years, though.

Sheltie Party

People who own Shetland Sheepdogs once again strutted their stuff at Dennis & Pat Sbarbaro's home in Lake Shastina last Saturday. Members of this herding breed are affectionately called "shelties" and are often mistaken for toy collies. They are very social and extremely intelligent; they also do well at agility and obedience trials all of which being reasons they are considered such good pets.

There are perhaps half a dozen sheltie owners in Lake Shastina but the "Roundup" began in Mt. Shasta when Bruce & Sally Batchelder gathered some sheltie lovers for a backyard potluck in 2001. Word got around, people started asking friends, and as things do, the party sort of took on a life of it's own.



This Roundup is the 7th one and there were people (and dogs) from as far away as Grants Pass and Elk Grove, CA. The puppies shown belong to Karen Coombs from Elk Grove, for example. There were perhaps 18 or 20 dogs (they get kind of hard to tell apart as you can see in this picture) and a few less people since some own more than one.

The Sbarbaros handed out gift bags full of toys and treats to each dog and special prizes to various categories such as oldest, farthest away, tallest, shortest, etc. Needless to say the doggies went right along with this in true party fashion. At one point maybe a dozen dogs got into a soccer match (sort of, they couldn't get their mouths around the ball) with the guests.

If anyone owns a sheltie here in the area, or knows of someone who does, please let our group know by calling Bruce Batchelder at 530-938-0385 so we can add their name(s) to our ever-growing guest list.

Farmers' Markets

This is the time of year when you can really appreciate fresh fruits, vegetables, and local crafts at the many local farmers' markets. These shots were taken in Medford when we stumbled across their Thursday event on South Pacific Highway. Like many, we make a "Costco run" once a month and this market was going strong yesterday. There was plenty of parking (paved, as was the market itself) and the temps had dropped from Wednesday's 102 degrees so it was bearable.

Much of what is sold in farmers' markets is organic and the 'made' goods like bread, candy, and food (tamales, Japanese dishes, donuts, etc. etc. at this one) are all cooked at home. There was even a stall that sold locally-raised buffalo meat. So what you get does not come by ship from Chile or Australia coated with preservatives and such. In fact it was hard to put off our planned lunch in Ashland there was so much ready-to-eat stuff!

There are markets like this here in Siskiyou County too, of course. I know of one in Weed and another in Mt. Shasta. The respective Chambers of Commerce would surely know the days and locations of each. It's likely there are markets in Yreka and Scott Valley as well.

They even had kiddie rides on ponies (the mist was for the heat):